Sydney Mall Killer worked as a male escort, obsessed with knives

The owner of a knife-sharpening company in Queensland, where Cauchi lived until a month ago, said The Guardian Australia that Cauchi was a “strange” and “strange” man who came into the shop about three years ago to have his two “everyday knives” sharpened.

“Which I thought was strange,” the owner recalls. “He wasn’t a chef or a butcher. He says, ‘Oh no, I’m just messing around in the backyard with the knives and I use them every day.’ …His expressions were just very vague, you could say there was no real personality about him, just weird.

Cauchi reportedly called police when his family tried to take and hide several knives from him in early 2023.